


Farewell (Until We Meet Again)

by BestHandwriting



Series: Goodbye, and May We Meet Again Someday [1]
Category: Aldnoah.Zero (Anime)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-31
Updated: 2016-03-31
Packaged: 2018-05-30 08:53:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6417028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BestHandwriting/pseuds/BestHandwriting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Harklight steps in the visitors’ room, he expects his greeting to be a slap to the face, but a warm embrace meets him instead.</p>
<p>A look at Lemrina and Harklight's relationship after the finale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Farewell (Until We Meet Again)

As the jail cell door creaks open, Harklight turns over on his cot and closes his eyes. The guard will drop the food down and leave, just as always. If Harklight had the strength, he might have gone and gotten the food himself. But today, tiredness permeates every fiber of his being. He’s tired of clockwork days. He’s tired of waking up every day knowing it’s another day closer to his execution.

But most of all, he’s tired of eating. What is the point of prolonging his life if he will just die in a few short weeks anyways? What is the point of living when he is kept from everything that could make these last days worthwhile?

A tray clanks down on the floor, and the door slams shut.

The guard will have surely left. After a few weeks of standing guard to a man who spent most of his waking hours lying in bed, they decided Harklight was hardly a threat and gave him hours in relative solitude. Though surely cameras still monitor him, he relishes these peaceful hours. At least during them, he mule his thoughts over without another person scrutinizing his every movement.

Today, though, he does not even move during these quiet hours.

He has no appetite for the bland, utensil-free meal they have given him today. And soon enough, sleep befalls him, leaving him dreaming his little time remaining away with fuzzy memories.

He startles awake to the slam of his cell door. His eyes fly open, trying to find something, anything to clarify the confusion, but all that meets them is the guard’s stern face, leering over his own. “Get up. You have a visitor.”

Harklight’s eyes flutter shut. A visitor? Who could possibly want to see him now?

“That was not a request.”

With a sigh, Harklight forces himself into a sitting position. There is no point in expending energy arguing when the end result will be the same.

He tries to stand as well, but firm hands keep him in place. “Sit still for a moment.”

Harklight does as asked, sticking his hands out so the guard can snap on handcuffs. To his amazement, it is not the cool metal against his wrists he feels first. Instead, a comb works through the tangles in his hair.

Why does the guard even bother? It isn’t like Harklight cares. He has done little to care for it since being shoved in his cell. After all, it’s another thing that would pointlessly expend energy. 

He doesn’t bother to ask that question. Talking wastes precious energy too.

When the guard finishes, he backs away with a satisfied grin. His eyes, blue as the faint sliver of sky Harklight watches out the lone window in his cell, even gleam with pride as he takes in the work he’s done. “That looks much better.”

Anything would look better than the horrible bedhead Harklight must have had previously. He keeps his mouth shut again; offering scathing comments hardly provides him with enough entertainment to make it worthwhile. And besides, the handcuffs return to Harklight’s hands soon enough, ending any thoughts of liberty of speech or otherwise he might have had.

As the guard leads Harklight out of his cell, he offers some supposedly motivational words, “Your visitor is rather excited to meet you. It took months for her to get clearance, but she refused to give up until they let her see you.”

The words are not so motivating as they are explanatory. Of course it would be _her._ There are only two women who could possibly be interested in seeing him, but only one plausible. Empress Asseylum Vers Allusia would not have the time to visit, nor would she be so determined to meet a man who she knew only as a friend of a friend.

The other princess, though, might just put in the effort to Harklight one last time before his death. She must still have so much to say to him.

When he steps in the visitors’ room, he expects his greeting to be a slap to the face, but a warm embrace meets him instead.

He doesn’t need to look down to know whose arms engulf him. If he could, he would return the gesture, but the handcuffs on his wrists leave him with no choice but to let his hands linger in front of him. If only he could hold her back with as much energy as he has left to give. There is no one he would rather spend it on than the one who still cares about him now.

His eyes water against his will at the thought.

After all this time, Lemrina Vers Envers didn’t forget about him.

“Harklight,” she whispers, eyes glazed with tears too, “I’ve missed you.”

Lemrina’s grown. Her hair reaches her shoulders now, and she’s traded the headband for a circlet worthy of a princess. She even walks on her own two feet now, albeit with leg braces. But most of all, she watches the world not with the bitter glare of a world-weary child, but with the understanding gaze of a self-assured princess.

She’s gotten beautiful too, like a true princess ought to be. She exchanged her plain gown for a simplistic yet elegant shirt and skirt combination that must have been Asseylum’s initially, but it suits her just as well.

She’s seventeen now, he remembers. Soon, she will turn 18 and become a full-fledged adult. Without realizing it, she’s grown up before his eyes, from a wishful child to a jaded teen into a wise adult.

That is all he will ever see, though.

Harklight knows the number of days left. This will be their last chance to meet, at least in this lifetime. And here they are, a prisoner of war and a reclaimed princess with an indelible bond connecting them to each other and to one who has since passed on to a better world.

“I’ve missed you too,” he finally replies. His voice cracks from disuse, but Lemrina doesn’t acknowledge it as a delighted smile crosses her lips.

When she steps back, her hands fall behind her back like she always used to do around Slaine. “You ought to. I spent a lot of time trying to see you.”

“So I’ve been told.” He tries to place his hands behind his back too, but the tug of the handcuffs keeps them firmly in place. “I didn’t think you would want to see me after…”

Harklight had forced her to follow Slaine’s orders for surrender despite disobeying them the first opportunity he got. She must hate him for that still; he knows he would.

Instead, Lemrina’s smile softens in reminiscence as she replies, “I hated you at first because I thought you had died too and left me alone. But when I heard you weren’t dead, I couldn’t be angry anymore. You had to live to hear everything you worked for deemed traitorous too.”

She lets out a sigh so word-weary, he can almost see her sixteen-year-old self in front of him again, slumped in her wheelchair. “I know we weren’t wrong. I know what we fought for was right. But to the world, fighting for that cause was villainous. They killed Slaine. They will kill you too. And when their bloodlust is satisfied, I’ll still be here. So before you went, I had to see you one last time. To make amends, I guess. I was rather rude to you the last time we spoke.”

He almost smiles at that. Her anguished screams still haunt his dreams, another regret on his long list of things he wishes he could change but can’t. “I deserved it.”

“Maybe,” she laughs a little at that, “but that’s not how friends ought to part ways.”

Friends. After all these years, they have finally come full circle. In the beginning, they called themselves friends too, back when he was just a naïve sixteen-year-old soldier trying to understand his role in the world and she was just a lonely twelve-year-old girl searching for companionship.

So much has changed since then.

And yet, some things never will.

She guides him to the table, and for a long while, they just talk as if nothing has changed. She speaks with such childish enthusiasm of the Earth, from the sea to the sky to the birds that soar between them. A few times, she even corrects Slaine’s old teachings with a few of her own. In those moments, it’s as if he’s talking with Slaine again, that knowing gaze too familiar.

But soon enough, time runs out.

“Did you know blue roses don’t actually exist? They have tried to genetically engineer them, but the few they have created are more lavender than blue. The only way to get true blue roses at the moment is to dye them.”

Harklight tries to respond, but a knock resounds on the door before he can speak. The guard pokes his head in and announces, “Your time is up.”

As the guard takes another look at them, his expression softens. “You can take a moment to say your goodbyes, Princess. I will be waiting outside if you need anything.”

When the door shuts, Lemrina stands back up again. Harklight starts to rise as well, but she lets out a mildly-annoyed huff that sits him right back down. “You don’t need to get up, Harklight. I can walk now.”

As she reaches his side, she bends down with such grace, he can hardly believe this was a girl who never used to be able to stand except in low-gravity. Her hands find his own, squeezing tight. She slips something into his hands as well, but he does not look down. “This is for you, Harklight. It’s one use, so use it when you think the time is right.”

Her eyes tear up a little, but she manages to hold her smile as she continues. “I can’t believe this is goodbye, Harklight. You’ve been here for me for so long… I don’t want to go back to knowing you won’t return.”

“It will be okay, Lemrina,” Harklight finally manages to reply, but his heart aches too at their last parting. “I’m at peace with whatever comes for me.”

“I know.” The tears start falling now, and her voice wavers, but she doesn’t let him go. “I know, Harklight, but I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you too.” His voice cracks again. Somehow, this goodbye is harder than he ever expected it to be.  Maybe it’s because, if he is to be honest with himself, he never imagined he would ever get the chance to say it.

“Thank you for everything, Harklight.”

“Even for forcing you to get on the ship?”

She chuckles at that even through her tears. “Even for that. You always watched out for me, even if I didn’t like it at the time, and I appreciate it.”

“It was only my duty.” He stands up despite her protests and manages a final bow to her as Versian tradition would dictate. When he finally rises again, she cries harder. Harklight expects her to give him a final hug and leave, but she defies his expectations one last time.

Lemrina rises to her tiptoes and presses a light kiss against Harklight’s lips.

It is nothing romantic. She still mourns a man who could have been her husband, and he longs for a man who could have never been his. But in that moment, it feels almost right, like this is how things were meant to have ended between them.

And if the tingle of Aldnoah runs through him once more, neither acknowledges it in that moment.

Aldnoah is not of much importance to either of them anymore.

“Don’t follow us for a long time, Lemrina” Harklight sighs, a gentle smile coming to his lips. “You still have a lot left to do.”

“I won’t,” Lemrina vows without a trace of uncertainty. “Take care, Harklight.”

“You too.”

Lemrina waves one last time, and then she is gone for good without another look back. The guard retrieves Harklight, and he must notice the object in Harklight’s hands, but he says nothing. He just leads Harklight back to his cell in silence as if respecting Harklight’s grief.

The days pass much slower after that. Harklight sets Lemrina’s gift on the desk, and no one touches it, not even the guards who go through their rotations. The little metal disk entices him, begs for him to press it, but he ignores the temptation. He cannot use it yet. The right time will come soon enough.

On the last day before he will die, Harklight takes his unattended hours to use his gift. The Aldnoah activation bequeathed to him one last time powers it up. At first, nothing happens, and he considers throwing it away for being useless, but just as he is about to pick it up, light shines on the wall in the image of a familiar face.

Lemrina smiles back, maybe a little younger than she was in their final meeting but just as regal. “I see you finally activated my gift, Harklight. Maybe now you will not be so surprised by the kiss.”

She takes a moment to laugh before continuing. “I wish I could imagine your reaction to that. Soon enough, though I hope to see it.”

Harklight could almost cry at the sight. Whatever she prepared for him, it is far too kind a gesture for a man like him. But still, he doesn’t dare miss a second of it.

He can only watch it once.

“Do you remember the days when Count Saazbaum would take a break and spend time with all of us? He used to have that old Terran video camera and film us to commemorate the moments, as if he was really our father.”

After all that happened since Count Saazbaum’s death, Harklight had forgotten completely about that.

“Well, when I was digging through things recovered from the Moon Base, I found the camera. This is all of them for you to watch. I hope you enjoy them, Harklight.”

The image flashes to another scene, one of a young blond boy who scrutinized the camera with blue-green eyes Harklight would know anywhere. Slaine asks, “I think it’s working, Count Saazbaum,” and Harklight almost starts crying there as the videos play, one after another.

Playing a Terran board game Lemrina found hidden in one of the closets in her wing.

A disastrous Christmas celebration Harklight could never forget, even without the video.

Slaine’s birthday, complete with a half-decent cake baked with supplies from Earth.

And before he knows it, tears stream down his face. Those times had long since passed them by, but to relieve them, if only in brief snippets, is a gift he never could repay. To see Slaine, Lemrina, even himself smiling and laughing as if they haven’t the slightest of cares in the world…

Those moments fade away with one last goodbye to the camera, and the disk disintegrates to silver dust.

Those times will never come back. Too much has happened for that.

But as he lies down on his bed for the last time, he cannot regret that.

_Thank you, Lemrina,_ he ought to say over and over again. _Thank you so much for sharing those videos with me._

He cannot say those words to her anymore. They will not meet again in this lifetime. But maybe in the next, those videos will reflect their everyday life. Maybe then, they can all be happy.

Maybe.

Maybe not.

But in the end, he can live with a maybe.

_No matter how things turn out, I know we’ll meet again._

**Author's Note:**

> I've been meaning to write something centered on Harklight and Lemrina's relationship for the longest time. It's a shame their relationship never got more focus in the show; they seemed to get along pretty well. So finally, inspiration hit me and this was the result. And hey, it's not even super tragic either! :)
> 
> By the way, sorry if it seems a bit out of character. I tried to write Lemrina as if she had matured since the finale, not necessarily exactly how she was in the show.


End file.
